Atami!

 I recommend you to visit Atami.Atami is a popular tourist destination.

It faces the Pacific Ocean. The town is made up of mountain slopes, so it is very sunny and hot. Also, Atami is famous as a villa and there are many tourists in summer.

There are various theories about the name Atami, but it was called Atsumigasaki because hot water gushed out of the sea.

In Man-you-shu(established 759-780), the best existing collection of poems in Japan, there is a description of Yugawara Onsen that is located in the neighboring city, and you can see that it has a long history as a hot spring resort in the area.

Atami was loved by Hidetsugu Toyotomi(1568-1595), Tokugawa Ieyasu(1543-1616) and Tokugawa Shougun’s family, and since the Meiji period, it has been known nationwide as a hot spring resort used by celebrities and emperors. With the improvement of roads in the early 20th century, the number of visitors increased, making what Atami is today as a hot spring tourist city.

There are a lot of food restaurants. We can eat fresh fish because of the area where the fish industry is flourishing. Ajiro fishing port is located about 15 minutes by car from Atami  Station. It’s known as a good port which has gentle waves and a weak wind. In addition, there is a wide sand dune formed by reclamation, so you can enjoy bathing in summer.

This is a photo of Kiunkaku. Kiunkaku was constructed as a cottage in 1919, and it became an inn in 1947. Many great writers such as Yuzo Yamamoto, Naoya Shiga, Jyunichiro Tanizaki, Osamu Dazai, Seiichi Funabashi, and Yasujun Takeda stayed there. It is a Western-style building that combines architectural styles and decorations from Japan, China, and Europe. 

The windows made of Taisho glass have exquisite distortion, transparency and a deep taste. The ultramarine blue wall, which is characteristic of the Japanese-style room, was repainted when it was rebuilt into ryokan. Ultramarine blue is called Kaga’s blue plaster and has been treated as a noble color.

The bottom picture is the sun room. We can enjoy the beautiful scenery of the garden. Also, there are beautiful carps and plants in the garden.